


Na'Lin (Your Blood)

by orphan_account



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Blood Kink, Cole-centric, M/M, Sort of Safe for Work, Suggestive Themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-01
Updated: 2015-04-01
Packaged: 2018-03-20 16:33:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3657408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inquisitor Mahanon Lavellan gets a cut on his hand, and Cole is distracted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Na'Lin (Your Blood)

**Author's Note:**

> My Dragon Age Elvish is not very strong, so if anybody sees a correction that needs to be made to grammar or spelling, please let me know. I know some of you are geniuses with it.

He held his arm up in the moonlight and watched the blood trickle down from all the cuts on his knuckles and the back of his fingers. Mahanon flexed his sore hand, forcing it to still grip arrows, draw back the string, let fly, fletching sing, marked target, shot strike. Every blow a killing blow, every enemy an instant corpse. Mahanon pulled back to the ear. Not tall, but the strength of his arms, the sharpness of eyes, and all his breath controlled, exhaling as if to drive the wind against his enemies. Old-world sort of strength. Not political, but natural, sorted for self by the way of the elvhen-taught, taut bowstring, sing, again to the eye of the Venatori.

                And then silence at last, and Cole was comfortable enough to flick the ooze from his knives. His weapons and armor glinted in the starlight, but it seemed to the spirit that Lavellan alone had caught the attention of the moon. He understood how the celestial thing above must feel, so distant from the small man who was entirely fascinating, entirely wonderful. In the minds of the others, there was no hint of notice that the Inquisitor was more in the night than they had been days ago; neither Blackwall nor Dorian had taken notice of the sudden fatal beauty that Cole found himself drawn to. He failed to sheathe his daggers, caught up in the mystifying aura of the elf, his way of plucking arrows from bodies like porcupine quills from foolish dogs. Precision, gentle forcefulness, and Mahanon’s hand slick with blood all the while.

                “Well, back to the camp then,” Dorian said, brushing the dirt from his shoulders and sleeves. “No sense wandering around after dark in the woods. It’s a good way to get lost or filthy.” He clicked his tongue to get everyone’s attention, but ultimately deferred to the Inquisitor. Mahanon nodded solemnly, distracted by his own minor injuries, and then pointed out their path. “That should be the quickest way. Not so many unexpected encounters through the tight woods.”

                Those eyes, Cole realized, were as binding to his attention as the flattery of the night sky. They glimmered, reflected the heavenly light in a way one might find eerie, like finding an unexpected animal roaming in the undergrowth. Yet instead of hostility, the spirit found an otherworldly beauty that harkened back to the more pleasant areas he had wandered in the fade, dancing with spirits of inspiration, creativity, darkling muses that sang their siren songs. Alluring like the blood on Lavellan’s hand. No.

                No, the blood was something more, Cole hummed to himself as he traveled at the back of the group. The blood was mortality, temporary, precious and limited. It would not last forever, like the candies that melted on the tongue, something to be savored. Human life. Elvhen life. Lavellan.

                “Well, goodnight then,” Blackwall muttered, wandering back to his tent long after Dorian had taken a beeline for his bedroll and perfume. Then it was just Lavellan nodding and fishing in his bag for bandages and disinfectant.

                Cole took the wounded fingers in his own, cupped them firmly but with no cruelty. “Let me help,” he said, voice cracking just the slightest. Just the night air. Just because of this moment, he thought.

                “I’m alright, Cole. You needn’t trouble yourself with… _Ma halani_! Cole, what are you--?!” Mahanon took his free hand and covered the lower half of his face, a brutal red heat rising from below, suffocating from the collar.

                Cole took his lips from the fingers, and his tongue as well, though he still pressed the deposit of coppery taste to the inside of his cheek. “I’m sorry,” he said, voice small. “I just wanted to help get it off of you.” While Lavellan had been shocked, the rogue had already masterfully slipped a length of bandage out of the pack and started to unravel it. “I could use a rag? We don’t have extra water, but alcohol? _Scent foul, burns,_ _a medicinal smell that won’t leave the nose. It was only a little cut, so why must it hurt so much? Don’t tell Keeper, or she will make me use it again, the stinging, burning, not for throat but blood and scab, infection. Better than to have it burst white, putrid, foul, filthy, festering—_ “

                “Th-That’s quite enough, Cole!” Mahanon shivered. He felt the flush leave and instead a pit forming in his stomach. As if he could not remember the stench of injured clansmen dying. No need to be reminded, especially in wartime, of the horrors from his past.

                Cole held the hand steady and warmed it. “It won’t happen again,” he avowed, looking deeply into the moon-like eyes of this amazing hunter of the Lavellan, this Herald of hopes and dreams, this grand Inquisitor. “Suffering, like that. I won’t let it happen again. Not to anybody. Not to you.” He smiled wanly, the shadows swallowing his pallor and casting darkness over his pink cheeks. He felt his heart dance in his chest, holding the Inquisitor’s hand. Samba, flamenco, rumba. Cole swallowed and dared peer over the brim of his hat again. Beyond the pounding in his ears, he still heard Lavellan’s soul calling out timidly, an echo of the pain from turning the old agonies to surface. And something else. Something small, wanting, needy but not greedy, a whisper on the lips of a cold, lonesome lover.

                Satina, that elegant celestial body, illuminated them still from above and Cole took his confidence in full. He pressed his lips back to Mahanon’s wounds, binding bandages from the wrist up as the elf whimpered and gasped.

                “Cole,” he sighed, almost a prayer on his lips. His vallaslin shivered, the leaves seeming almost real, elegant nature blooming from that most precious of faces. “Why… Why are you…?”

                The spirit smiled and lapped up the last of the blood, still feeling it thick on his tongue. He let the wraps fall onto his lap like a ribbon, a bow undone from a woman’s dress after a night at the ball. It was salve in his grasp now. His deft fingers massaged herbal remedy into every inch of cut, cold, soothing cream, combat the sting, the burn, eliminate the nightmare idea. No white boiling over from beneath flesh, not tonight. “It makes it feel better,” he purred to Mahanon. “I don’t want you to be hurt. I notice it, always. You don’t have to pretend it’s gone; never feel like that with me.” He looked up at Lavellan, tilted his head much like a curious pup, always listening, learning. “Is that all right?”

                The thumping of the heart was so loud, Cole was sure Mahanon did not notice “ _Ma Vhenon_ ” slip past his teeth, into the thick atmosphere that bound them. Nor was he aware when all the wounds were treated, his fingers wrapped, and the final healing-kiss delivered to the un-anchored hand. There was only staring, the powerful draw Cole understood tonight. Something in the wind, perhaps, but Mahanon was fascinating, entirely wonderful. Something in the night, perhaps, but Cole was the compassion Mahanon had needed beyond explanation.

                “Ma serranas…”

                “Anything for you,” he said with a nervous chuckle, “ _my heart_.”


End file.
